


Sounds of Sanity

by Waldo



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e08 Conversion, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-04
Updated: 2006-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drugs in his system made him listless and foggy.  The retrovirus that remained entwined with his DNA made him wakeful and agitated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sounds of Sanity

The drugs in his system made him listless and foggy. The retrovirus that remained entwined with his DNA made him wakeful and agitated.

He wanted to sleep. He wanted to drift off and wake in a few weeks as himself. But he was too restless to sleep now. It was discomfiting, the urge to lay still with his eyes closed, but his absolute inability to actually fall asleep. Carson had said that he'd slept and been sedated for almost a week already, which was making it hard for his body to adjust, to let him sleep and wake normally quite yet.

So he lay there listening to Carson talk. For the first five days he barely understood anything he was saying, but the Scottish lilt was a constant, a calming anchor to the world he struggled to return to. He didn't need to find the energy or clarity to answer right now. He just needed to listen.

Gentle fingers were going through his hair and he just lay back to listen. "I know that the idea of being stuck here for a few weeks sounds like pure and total hell to someone like you, but we'll try to make it as bearable as we can, alright?" Carson laid his free hand over John's still-scaly, bluish-green one.

John dredged up the energy to nod just a little under the hand that still pet his hair. If he could sleep for those two weeks it might not be bad at all. But he couldn't find the strength to say that.

"Anything you can think of that'll make this any easier on you, love?"

John flipped his hand over, capturing Carson's in his own, careful that the talons that replaced his nails didn't poke or scratch and squeezed. Now that he wasn't violent and that he was starting to show at least some traces of understanding, Carson had been spending a lot of time at his bedside, holding his hand or stroking his hair or rubbing his back and just talking to him. He'd read to him from _War and Peace_ – John couldn't find the strength or nerve to tell him that the book bored him senseless – and fill him in on Atlantis gossip – Zelenka and McKay? He'd have to follow up on that one when he felt better. And more than any drug in the universe, these were the things that kept John calm and marginally sane.

His voice sounded rusty and exhausted when he finally whispered, "Just keep talking to me."


End file.
